The Letter Press Style is appearing in a lot of designs at the moment so I thought that I’d give you Serif Craft Artist users a quick guide on how I created this style using Serif Craft Artist so that you can add it to your projects if you want to.

What is Letter Press?

The letter press technique dates back to early printing presses where the individual letters would be arranged on a printing block and inked before being passed through the printing press. This resulted in the letters on the page being slightly embossed and coloured. The same technique is applied in with a variety of tools these days and many crafters are adopting the style within their cardmaking.

Assumptions

For this tutorial I have made the assumption that you have the Serif Craft Artist software installed on your PC or Laptop and that you have a basic understanding of how to use it.

Get The Letter Press Look – Style 1

Step 1 – Apply the background.

Drag a background onto your project area.

Step 2 – Applying the text.

Apply some text using the text tool. Select all of the text and then Right Click on the selected text and choose Filter Effects from the drop-down menu.

Step 3 – Applying the Filter Effects – Step 1

Click in the box by “Bevel and Emboss” and then adjust all of the settings as follows (or as shown in the image below).

Highlight = Screen with the colour set as black or a very dark grey.

Opacity = 75.

Shadow = Multiply with the colour set as white or a very light grey.

Opacity = 75.

Blur = 2pt

Depth = 50

Soften = 0

Angle = 53

Elevation = 15

Style = Emboss

Step 4 – Applying the Filter Effects – Step 2

Click in the box by “Colour Overlay” and then adjust all of the settings as follows (or as shown in the image below).

Blend Mode = Screen

Opacity = 50

Colour = White or a very light grey.

Scale with Object = unticked.

Now Click on the OK button.

Step 5 – The Result

Once you have completed Steps 1 – 4 you should have something like the image below. The letters should look as if they have been pushed into the page and filled in with colour.

It’s Play Time

In the image below I put together a few examples of what happens when you begin playing with the settings, turning the colour overlay filter effect off and also when you apply the same effect to a quick shape – impressive right? Feel free to play with the settings, change the colour of the text in the normal way and even turn off the colour overlay for a variety of results.

Get The Letter Press Look – Style 2

Follow steps “1 – Apply The Background” and “2 – Apply The Text” from the instructions for Style 1 above, then choose and apply a colour to your text that closely matches the main colour of your background before moving on to Step 3.

Step 3 – Applying the Filter Effects – Drop Shadow

Click in the box by “Drop Shadow” and then adjust all of the settings as follows (or as shown in the image below).

Blend Mode = Multiply

Opacity = 1pt

Intensity = 0

Colour = White

Lock = Centre

Distance = 1pt

Angle = 90

Scale with Object = Remove the tick from this box

Step 4 – Applying the Filter Effects – Inner Shadow

Click in the box by “Inner Shadow” and then adjust all of the settings as follows (or as shown in the image below).

Blend Mode = Multiply

Opacity = 75

Blur = 1pt

Intensity = 0

Colour = Black

Lock = Centre

Distance = 1pt

Angle = 53

Now click on the OK button.

Step 5 – The Result

Once you’ve completed the steps above you will have a letter pressed word, phrase or sentiment. The edges are sharper than those seen in Style 1.

What Next?

So, you’ve created this style, now what? The sky is the limit really. You could create digital designs with it to share with your friends and family, create printed designs for special occasions or even create labelling for your kitchen produce or home made wine – the choice is yours.

You can save the style for future use. To do this Right Click on the selected design and choose “Create Graphic Styles”. A dialogue box will open that will give you the chance to name and categorise the style and save it in your workspace.

You can export it to share it with your friends or in forums etc. Graphic styles can be exported individually or saved within digikits that you create.

If you have any questions above this tutorial, please use the comment section below to leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

I love using serif as visitors to my page on facebook will testify by the sheer amount of craftisted[is there such a word, there is now!] designs on there! Love all your demos but having just found your blog[at long last as computer doesn’t see to have wanted me to for far too long!] I love it and the tutorials on it. So this one about doing letterpress style on serif is right up my street and will certainly have a go. Thank you so much for sharing with us all. Crafty hugs Keren Craftymanxiexx

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